First 10 Minutes: Bionic Commando

Capcom is launching GRIN's Bionic Commando this week and here is the First 10 Minutes of the game. I'm in the middle of exams so my time with it has been very limited, but I can share my first impressions at least.

The graphics aren't of the spectacular kind (with some framedrops here and there), but it works and there's always things moving on the screen like papers and debris flying from wind or grenades. The story itself is explained in the video inside (though it's supposed to have some twists later on) and the controls works well for its purpose.

People asked why I didn't use the arm more to melee kill in the video we posted earlier this week, but there are only a few moves early in the game and these aren't good against two or more enemies. In the training mode, which I cut out from the video, new moves are shown but you can't use them until later on.

The swinging mechanics aren't of the basic kind, you can't expect it to be as simple as the Spiderman games. The swing motions are short and it's very important to push and release at the right time. Otherwise, the swing motion abruptly stops and that made me go crazy during my first times in the air. It takes a little bit of practice.

One thing I've really enjoyed so far is the shooting mechanics, the guns so far have felt really good. The enemies can't be killed from distance with the pistol so you're forced to work your way closer to the enemies. This can be hard when there's little to swing on, with several guys firing at you from the ground. This isn't Gears of War where you run from cover to cover, the buildings and surroundings in the air must be used to move forward.

Now on for the video, mostly showing shooting in narrow corridors. The gameplay video from earlier this week shows more of the swinging.

I'm half way through the game now, and I'm still enjoying it. Sometimes it can be very frustrating, like the level part where you have to swing across a massive water lake using the balloon type things. Man, I realy needed like 15 attempts to get across because you have to time each swing almost perfectly.
The graphics are very nice. The motion blur, the depth of field and the feeling of speed when swinging are very well done. The boss fights are quite intense.
It is a game you will either love or hate. It surely has a lot more potential than what's offered, so if they decide to make a second one, and manage to make it less linear and a little more forgiving in the swinging part, it could be become a strong franchise. For now: Good first attempt.

I finished the game and i don't like it at all.
It's a frustrating game with bad graphics,bad A.I.,cheap difficulty,etc....one of the worst games of 2009 for me.
Bad graphics....no V-sync en AA.Some levels are OK but others are just ugly.
Bad A.I.and tons of the same bad guys over and over again.
Bad cliché story and characters with cliché voice overs....man this was just awful.
There is no exploration possible.....try to get up a building and you will die in 2 seconds (the same with water)The game is made around linear gameplay in the worst possible sence.The city is nuked and there is only a narrow route with no radiation to explore!(some levels last for 3 minutes)
With cheap difficulty i mean boss fights in narrow/small places with debrish on the ground.Later in the game they just drop 2 or more bosses under the same circumstances.The save points are also made to make the game longer.In the last levels you get no save points at all.
Like usual the end boss is a joke.....and i was not mad about it.....the faster this was over the better.

I have this game (why?) and it sucks. I'm told that it gets better when you get into it but I feel that it doesnt really deserve to be played, it just handles and looks like an xbox 1 game. Shame cos I was kind of looking forward to this one.

Melmoth
will be used for things like shadows and reflections. Looks like a logical way forward, and won't require completely new rendering pipelines. (2 Hours ago)

Melmoth
Frostbite, UE and Unity are implementing support. Were' not talking about full bruteforce raytracing pipeline here, but more a combination of tradidional rasterization and raytracing, where raytracing (2 Hours ago)